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Two UCI Graduate Schools Rank Among Top 50 in U.S. News & World Report Annual Listing

Irvine, Calif. , April 2, 2004 — Two UC Irvine graduate school programs — engineering and business — ranked among the nation's top 50 in the latest U.S. News & World Report annual listing of graduate schools. The 2005 edition of "America's Best Graduate Schools" will be available at newsstands and bookstores April 5.

The Henry Samueli School of Engineering ranked 42nd in a tie with Dartmouth College, Rutgers University and the University of Virginia. Several of the school's specialty areas ranked in the top 50 as well, including aerospace/aeronautical/astronautical (31), chemical (50), civil (34), computer (42), electrical/electronic/communications (46), environmental/environmental health (30), materials (36) and mechanical (37). The Samueli School ranked 47th last year. This year's ranking is based on a 2004 survey of deans and department chairs at 185 U.S. engineering schools with doctoral programs.

"We are pleased with the latest rankings," said Nicolaos G. Alexopoulos, dean of the Samueli School. "They reflect the vision created by our school five years ago to grow in specific areas, the excellence of our faculty and students, and the fact that eight of our faculty are National Academy of Engineering members. Also, I credit the involvement of our administration and many colleagues across campus, especially in the School of Information and Computer Science."

UCI's Graduate School of Management ranked 47th, tied with Boston University, Tulane University and the University of Iowa. GSM also ranked 12th in the specialty area of information systems. For business school rankings, U.S. News surveyed 377 accredited master's programs on quality, placement success and student selectivity.

Each year, U.S. News ranks graduate programs in the areas of business, education, engineering, law and medicine. These rankings are based on two types of data: expert opinion about program quality and statistical indicators that measure the quality of a school's faculty, research and students. For the rankings in all five areas, indicator and opinion data come from surveys of more than 1,000 programs and nearly 9,100 academics and other professionals conducted in fall 2003.

In another recent ranking, the Shanghai Jiao Tong University Institute of Higher Education ranked the top 500 universities in the world. Its "Academic Ranking of World Universities - 2003" used indicators of academic or research performance, including Nobel laureates, highly cited researchers, articles published in Nature and Science, articles in the Science Citation Index and Social Science Citation Index, and academic performance per faculty. UCI ranked 44th in the world and 34th among American universities. Shanghai Jiao Tong University is one of the oldest universities in China, having educated prominent Chinese including Jiang Zemin, president of the People's Republic of China.